Why Humans and Their Fur Parted Ways

The New York Times (Science Times) ^ | August 19, 2003 | NICHOLAS WADE

[VadeRetro]

Sorry! Should have sourced that figure.

For anyone wanting to read the web article from the beginning, click here.

L and M are a neanderthal and a Cro-magnon, respectively.

[Sam Cree]

"Well, "M" looks a little like James Carville."

Yeah, has about as much hair!

[Sam Cree]

Thanks.

So, if I am reading this right, Cro Magnon man was a "modern" man.

[Sam Cree]

btw, now that you posted the picture, I see what they meant, talking about "long" faces on that other thread, and the relative shortness of ours.

[Sentis]

Another silly thread where people who should know better argue with creationists. They aren't going to change their limited view of the world why bother educating them?

[VadeRetro]

Cro-magnon is basically modern and is grouped within H. sapiens. The fossils show a more robust appearance than the typical modern skull, but they're within easy striking distance.

[VadeRetro]

Yup. Some real pooch muzzles on that figure there.

[Sam Cree]

Yeah, I see that the cheekbones are very prominent on that Cro Magnon skull.

[VadeRetro]

Background on that Cro-magnon find. (Doesn't get any prettier close up.)

[Ahban]

It is up to me to do the disclaimer on Mr. Retro's post #95.

M and N in that set are humans. L, K, and J are Neandertals which DNA tests have shown are not the ancestors of modern humans. That takes us back to I, Homo Egaster, which went extinct long before M and N ever show up in the fossil record (about 40 something thousand years ago). Those dots do not connect.

A-I homininds look as much like the great ape they just discovered in the Congo as they do a human. It does not follow that N and M descended from them.

[VadeRetro]

Those dots do not connect.

You mean like, "Where are the transitionals?" Nothing will ever connect the dots for you.

When Darwin wrote, you know how much of that figure had been observed? "A" and "N." So long after he's dead we find B through M ordered correctly in the sediments. I keep asking, was he right or was he the luckiest charlatan of all time?

Out for the night.

[Unassuaged]

Well, my take on this article is this. The pictures at the top are captioned to show conventional wisdom, not stated as fact, also the webbing comment is refering to a theory that has benn around for a few decades, that our ancestors were in a tight spot, and lived in the water for a while (many generations)--the evidence supporting this theory is webbing, lack of body hair and fatty "blubber" layer under the skin. They obviously left the semi-aquatic lifestyle long ago. And nowhere here does it try to say you were evolved from a frog.

[Virginia-American]

Of course, they would never consider that we humans were originally without "fur" and that we were designed that way by a Creator Who in the end is going to have the Last Laugh!

So far, there's only one piece of evidence supporting this - the Bible (and Koran). But there are literally thousands of pieces of evidence - common genes and mutations and other genetic material - supporting the idea that we share a common ancestor with the (other) great apes.

Just the Bible and Koran. No other religion has anything much like Genesis.

[LiteKeeper]

So far, there's only one piece of evidence supporting this - the Bible (and Koran)

The evidence we have is exactly the same evidence that evolutionists have. Fossils are fossils are fossils. The difference is, we have a different worldview. We accept the fact of the existence of God, and His creative acts. The history of those acts is recorded in the Bible, that is true. But that does not automatically negate our interpretation of the facts.

I teach my students that truth claims are only true ir they comport with reality. Your truth claim of lot's of evidence for evolution just won't stand up to what is actually being discovered. The incredible complexity of even the smallest cell, chock full of information, defies an evolutionary explanation. The smallest known cell contains 482 genes and 540,00 base pairs in its DNA, and it doesn't have enough genetic information to live on its on - it is a parasite. So where did all the information for the first stand alone living cell come from? Evolutionist cannot answer that question...and yet that is the most basic question that can be asked.

Respectfully
LiteKeeper

[Virginia-American]

Fossils are fossils are fossils.

I never mentioned fossils - just the shared dna.

Your truth claim of lot's of evidence for evolution just won't stand up to what is actually being discovered

Check this out: Plagiarized Errors and Molecular Genetics

Especially the chart in section 4.7 Is there a non-evolutionary explanation for this?

[abiogenesis] Evolutionist cannot answer that question...

That's a far cry from "never will anwser that question". The genetic code was only discovered 50 years ago. do you think it's realistic to expect its origins to already have been figured out? It's being researched RNA World Lots of intriguing hypotheses and theorizing, not a whole lot of solid results yet. I'm very curious what we will find under the ice on some of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn.

[Rudder]

Crap like this gives science and especially evoutionary theory a bad name. The louse theory is speculative enough, but to confound it with sexual dimorphism makes it read like a 3rd-rate science fiction fantasy. It's a shitty job, but I guess someone's got to make science interesting, relevant and captivating to the masses.

[Little Ray]

I stand corrected; however my point was that we did not evolve from modern apes. Some people think we evolved from chimps and gorillas and this obviously not the case. We share a distant common ancestor and from that point our species have diverged.
To go with your skulls, it is interesting to note that an infant chimp looks much more human than an adult chimp.

[mewzilla]

ROTF!!! I missed that thread! Thanks for the link. I needed a giggle :)

[Snowy]

LOL! I immediately thought of this guy!

[VadeRetro]

Might as well mention, regarding your other claims, that A and I (or B and I for that matter) don't look the same to me, nor do I and J look unbreachably different. There is nothing magical in your arbitrary lumpings.

Furthermore, different creationists (or even the same creationist at different times) produce different arbitrary lumpings from the same data. The game, of course, is to say that everything HERE is "An ape! Just an ape!" but everything THERE is "A man! Just a man!" So where is the line drawn?

All over the map.

Creationist Classifications of Hominid Fossils

Specimen		Cuozzo (1998)	Gish (1985)	Mehlert (1996)	Bowden (1981) Menton (1988) Taylor (1992) Gish (1979)	Baker (1976) Taylor and Van Bebber (1995)	Taylor (1996) Lubenow (1992)
	ER 1813 (510 cc)	Ape	Ape	Ape	Ape	Ape	Ape
	Java (940 cc)	Ape	Ape	Human	Ape	Ape	Human
	Peking (915- 1225 cc)	Ape	Ape	Human	Ape	Human	Human
	ER 1470 (750 cc)	Ape	Ape	Ape	Human	Human	Human
	ER 3733 (850 cc)	Ape	Human	Human	Human	Human	Human
	WT 15000 (880 cc)	Ape	Human	Human	Human	Human	Human